The Lex Regia consisted of forty articles, which declared, inter alia, that “the hereditary kings of Denmark and Norway shall, and must, be regarded by their subjects as the only supreme chiefs on earth. They shall be above all human laws, and whether in matters spiritual or matters temporal shall recognise no other superior than God.” That “the King only has the supreme right of making and interpreting laws, of abrogating, amending, or superseding them”. That “the King only has the power of conferring office, or removing from office, according to his mere pleasure”. That “all dignities and offices of whatsoever kind are derived from the King, and held at his will”. That “the King alone has the right of disposing of the fortresses and troops of the realm; he alone can declare war, with whom, and when, he pleases; he alone can make treaties, impose taxes, or raise contributions of any kind”. That “the King alone has supreme jurisdiction over all the ecclesiastics of his dominions; he alone can regulate the rites and ceremonies of public worship, convoke councils and synods, terminate their sessions, etc.”. That “all the affairs of the kingdom, all letters and public acts, can only be expedited in the royal name—sealed with his seal and signed by his hand”. That “the King shall not be required to take any oath or form any engagement, whether verbal or written, since in quality of free and absolute monarch, his subjects can neither impose an oath upon him nor prescribe any conditions to limit his authority”. That “the whole realm of Denmark and Norway, its provinces, dependencies, islands, fortresses, rights, jewels, money of every kind, its army, navy, everything now enjoyed, everything that may be acquired hereafter, are the inalienable property of the sovereign alone, and can never be divided or separated from the crown”.

These few quotations from the Lex Regia will serve to show that Christian VII. arrogated to himself by this decree a power which no other monarch in Europe claimed. Not even that most mighty empress, Catherine of Russia, was so great an autocrat as this. In the Lex Regia of Denmark we find the most boundless, irresponsible, unmitigated despotism, without a single provision in favour of the life, substance, or liberty of any subject, high or low. The re-establishment of this despotism in all its nakedness was the essence of Struensee’s policy, for, since the reign of the monarch who promulgated it a century before, it had gradually fallen into disuse.

Frederick III., the author of the Lex Regia, was an absolute monarch in practice as well as theory; he broke the power of the nobles, and nothing stood between him and his imperious will. His successor, Christian V., began his reign on the same principles, but he found it necessary before long to conciliate the nobles, and one of his first acts was to create an order of titled nobility. Previously, all of noble birth had been merely styled nobles, but now they were given the titles of counts and barons—as if to console them for the loss of their authority. Certain other privileges were granted to them, but they still had no share in the government of the country, which the King kept in his own hands. Gradually, however, there was formed a Council of State, or Privy Council, which consisted of the heads of the different departments in the state—such as the minister of foreign affairs, the minister who was responsible for the army, the head of the naval department, and the head of the finance department. These posts at first were filled by the King’s creatures, who relieved him of detail business, but were unable to come to any decision apart from him; but as time went on the nobles gradually crept back into office, and were nominated one by one as heads of departments, until the Council of State assumed more importance. Under the reign of Christian VI. the Council of State was practically a committee of nobles, through whom the King governed; and during the latter part of the reign of Frederick V. (Christian VII.’s father) it usurped the sovereign power, and the King became a puppet in the hands of his ministers. Once more, despite the Lex Regia, the nobles became the rulers of Denmark. Had they used their power wisely, they might have remained so; but great abuses grew up. They filled every post with their creatures; they betrayed the interests of Denmark to foreign countries; the departments of state were badly administered, the national defences neglected, and the people heavily taxed. This was the state of affairs which Struensee was determined to remedy.

Christian VII., who had fretted under the yoke of the Council of State, especially when he first came to the throne (when the ministers who composed it strove by every means to prevent him from governing and to keep the power in their own hands), was quite ready to carry out the daring policy of its abolition, though that policy was dictated to him by Struensee. The King did not see that he was exchanging the tyranny of King Log for that of King Stork. He always wearied of those who dictated to him, whether ministers or favourites. He had wearied of Moltke, he wearied of Bernstorff, and in the same way he wearied of Sperling and Holck; and the time was coming when he would weary most of all of Struensee and Brandt. But at present he was indifferent to everything; he had long since ceased to take the initiative, and only asked to be relieved of the burden of state. Sunk into premature dotage—a listless gazer at the drama of life—so long as he was left in peace to enjoy the few things he still cared about, he recked nothing of his government, his kingdom, or the world. By the abolition of the council he had become in theory the most absolute autocrat in Europe. He had only to speak the word, or sign a paper, for the word and the writing to immediately become law; but in fact he was an imbecile, who let his whole power and authority drift into the hands of another—nominally, into those of the Queen, in reality of Struensee, who greedily snatched at every atom of power. In his muddled brain Christian VII. still clung to the belief that he was rendering himself equal to his great exemplar, Frederick the Great. The King of Prussia had found a way of diminishing the power of his ministers by becoming his own minister, and by signing the decree abolishing his Council of State Christian VII. imagined that he was acting on a similar plan. But, needless to say, there was no resemblance between the two monarchs; Frederick the Great did everything himself, but the Danish King did nothing, and the stereotyped answer he made to everyone at this time was: “Apply to Struensee”. Struensee had become a sort of Grand Vizier.

The day after the suppression of the Council of State a new body was established, called the Council of Conferences, but it had no real power. The members, who were the heads of the different departments of the state, and all Struensee’s nominees, met when commanded to do so by the King, and expressed their views on such business as was laid before them, advised on matters of form, and sent in their reports in writing. As these reports all passed through Struensee’s hands in his new office of Master of Requests, they were very useful to him; they set him right in matters of detail, and gave him the information he required without his seeming to seek it. As that shrewd observer, Gunning, wrote: “This is no ill-timed political scheme for those at the helm, who will, by this method, be able to gain considerable lights without suffering any one to have access to the King, their master, but themselves”.[154]

The abolition of the Council of State, though it was so drastic a measure, was greeted with applause by the people—the burghers and the peasants—who had long groaned under the tyranny of the nobility, and had come to look upon them as the cause of all their ills. The royal decree of course called forth a tremendous uproar from the privileged classes, and if the nobles could have conferred together the situation might have become dangerous. But Struensee hit on a very ingenious plan for driving them out of Copenhagen. Most of them were heavily in debt, and under the old order of things had set their creditors at defiance. Struensee, therefore, obtained an order from the King, decreeing that any creditor could arrest his debtor, if unable to pay at the time of demand, and keep him in prison until the debt was discharged. In a very short time nearly all the nobility were hurrying from the capital to their country seats. Having scattered them, Struensee took a further step to prevent them from returning to Copenhagen. He issued a decree, signed by the King, to the effect that it was undesirable to encourage the flocking to court of persons who hoped to make their fortunes there, for it only tended to ruin and impoverish the country districts, and entail great expense on the King. It would be much better for the nobility, who did not desire official employment, to remain on their estates and spend their money there instead of coming so much to the capital; and those nobles who desired employment in the future must first qualify themselves for it in subordinate posts. In giving these appointments the King, henceforth, would be guided entirely by service and merit, and pay no regard to favour or backstairs influence.

From the enforced retirement of their country seats the Danish nobility cursed Struensee with impotent wrath; he gave them more to curse him for before long. Having got rid of them he next abolished their placemen and parasites, who might have acted as their agents in the capital. He issued a circular to all the Government departments, informing them that in future no lackey who waited on a master would be eligible for a public office; and thus the hateful system of lackeydom was abolished. Formerly the nobles at the head of the departments had given minor offices to their coachmen and their footmen in lieu of payment, and with the result that a great number of ignorant and incapable men were foisted upon the state, and the administration of the Government departments was hopelessly mismanaged. Struensee sought to break down all privileges of caste. Formerly only the nobility were allowed to use torches at night when they drove out in their carriages, but now an order was promulgated giving leave to all persons, of whatever rank, whether in hired carriages or their own, to use torches at night. But the permission was not generally availed of—probably because the good burghers of Copenhagen found that if they and their wives encroached upon the privileges of the nobility, they did so at the risk of losing their custom.

Having clipped the claws of the nobility, Struensee next aimed a series of blows at his other enemies, the clergy. During the two previous reigns the clergy had gained great influence in Denmark, and now encroached in matters outside their sphere. Not content with their spiritual sway, they expressed their opinion on political matters with great frankness from their pulpits, and even the court did not escape censure. Struensee, though the son of an eminent divine, was a freethinker, and hostile to clerical influence, and both the King and Queen disliked being preached at. Therefore it was not long before the clergy were made to feel the weight of their displeasure. A great number of religious festivals were still kept in Denmark as public holidays, to the hindrance of business, and the encouragement of idleness and extravagance on the part of the people; the clergy cherished these festivals, and hitherto the Government had not dared to abolish them, for fear of giving offence to the Church. But the new order of things had scant reverence for old abuses, and a royal decree was promulgated, which abolished, henceforth and for ever, the public holidays at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, the Epiphany, St. John’s Day, Michaelmas Day, All Saints, the Purification, Visitation and Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, and the annual Te Deums in celebration of the deliverance of Copenhagen from Charles X.’s attack on February 11, 1659, and of the great fire. By another decree liberty of conscience was granted to all, and universal toleration in matters of religion. Henceforth every man would be allowed to follow his own belief without let or hindrance, to choose his own form of worship, or not to worship, as he pleased. These decrees gave great offence to the established clergy, who considered the first to be unwarrantable interference with the vested rights of the Church, and the second, an encouragement of godlessness and infidelity.

Struensee was a great believer not only in new measures but new men. Some of his appointments were good ones—notably that of Professor Oeder (an able man who had hitherto been a member of the agricultural commission) as head of the financial department. Oeder helped Struensee materially in his gigantic labours, and often warned him against precipitate and violent measures. Struensee also summoned his brother, Charles Augustus Struensee, to Copenhagen, and appointed him one of the deputies in the College of Finances. Charles Augustus was a clever and hard-working man, without his brother’s genius, but with a great deal more ballast, and no objection could be taken to his appointment except on the score of nepotism—a charge which could not fairly be brought against Struensee, for his brother was the only member of his family whom he appointed to any important office. Dismissals were the order of the day in every department of the state; the imperious minister brooked no opposition to his will even in the most trifling details. Count Moltke, court marshal, son of the former Prime Minister, was dismissed because he demurred to some change in ceremonial, on which he was a much better authority than Struensee; a page of the chamber, who was so imprudent as to speak disrespectfully of Struensee, was sent away without warning, and the young chamberlain Warnstedt, who was a favourite of both the King and the Queen, and had stood in confidential relations with Struensee, was banished from court in consequence of having made a single incautious remark about him. The aged and respected Viceroy of Norway, Benzon, was dismissed from office without any explanation; the Burgomaster of Bergen was discharged in the same way; the bailiff and under-bailiff of Copenhagen were displaced at an hour’s notice. In fact, no official considered himself safe any longer, but was liable at any moment to be dismissed without warning, explanation or pension. As the disgraced official generally had his discharge handed to him by a groom of the royal stables mounted on a yellow horse, it became a saying in Copenhagen: “Whom did the yellow horse visit last?” or, “If you are not careful, you will see the yellow horse to-morrow”.

Struensee’s idea of government was absolute despotism, combined, oddly enough, with a liberal and enlightened policy. He was a despot, but he was also a doctrinaire, and his ideas generally were in advance of his time. He had read widely German philosophy, notably that of Leibniz, and was a firm believer in the so-called eudÆmonistic utilitarianism—the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. He believed also in perfectionism—the inherent right of the individual man to work out his own perfection in every respect. Leibniz was an exponent of this school, so was Goethe, who called his Faust a “Beyond-man”.[155] Struensee was a pioneer who sought to reduce these views to practice. He grafted on his German philosophy certain Pagan ideals, he affected a benevolent despotism, and he believed himself to be an uebermensch, a “Beyond-man,” a man of destiny. So thoroughly did he believe in himself, that he forced the same conviction on others for a time—even his enemies, who saw in him something superhuman and dreaded him accordingly. He bore down all outside opposition by the sheer force of his will, and so long as he was sure of himself his power was assured.

Struensee was a great reformer, and the intrepidity with which he carried out his theories compels admiration, but like many other reformers he neglected to temper his zeal with discretion. Perhaps he had an instinct that his day would not be long, for he was a reformer in a hurry. Within a few months after the abolition of the Council of State he revolutionised the government of the kingdom. By a series of royal decrees, nominally issued by the King, he reformed every department of the state. He rearranged the finance department, he overhauled the admiralty and the war office, he cut down the expenses of the Danish legations abroad, he abolished the method under which titles, places and pensions had been granted, and revised the collection of taxation. Efficiency and economy were his watchwords; and had his system been given time to work, there is every reason to believe that he would have achieved both in the great spending departments of the state.

This is not the place to write a detailed account of Struensee’s administration,[156] but a brief summary may be given of some of his principal reforms, because they throw a light upon the character and career of this extraordinary man. They were planned on the broad principle of “the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number,” and nearly all of them aimed at benefiting the people at the expense of vested interests. To appreciate his reforms we have to remember that the government of Denmark was honeycombed with abuses, and the peasants were ground down to the level of beasts of burden. Only drastic measures could remedy this state of things, and those which Struensee proposed were so sweeping as to amount to a revolution.

Perhaps the most important reform he effected was in the administration of justice. It was decreed that henceforth all men, whatever their rank, were equal before the law; judges who had shown themselves corrupt or negligent in the performance of their duties were removed from their posts, and the delay in hearing trials was censured. A multiplicity of law courts existed in Copenhagen and the provinces, which caused great confusion and hindered the course of justice; these were all abolished, and in their stead a single jurisdiction was instituted. This reform gave great offence to lawyers, who lost many fees thereby, but it proved most effectual for the better administration of justice.

The civic government of Copenhagen was reformed with a view to bettering the management of the city revenues and the carrying out of improvements. The streets were named and lighted, and the houses were numbered. These changes gave almost as much offence to the burghers as the abolition of festivals had given to the clergy, for they were regarded as encroachments on the rights and liberties which the city had obtained at various times from the Kings of Denmark. But Struensee did not heed, and routed the forces of bumbledom in the same way as he had routed those of bigotry. He even aimed a blow at Sabbatarianism, and forbade the police of Copenhagen to enter private houses without a warrant, and meddle with what might, or might not, be done by the inhabitants on Sundays. Heretofore if found working or indulging in “unseemly merriment” in their houses on Sundays, citizens were liable to fine or imprisonment—a system which led to gross abuses of the power of the police, but which was tenaciously upheld by the magistrates and clergy.

Other reforms included the abolition of the censorship of the press, leaving it perfectly free; a regulation aimed at the fraudulence of trustees; and another to check the extravagant expense of funerals, which were often so costly as to entail ruin on the family of the deceased. No abuse seemed too small to escape the eagle eye of the reformer.

A royal decree was issued which benefited the serfs. Hitherto they had been helpless slaves in the hands of their tyrannical masters—the nobles and landowners; but now they were only required to render compulsory service on certain days and hours of the week, and the remaining time was their own. The peasants were also placed under the protection of the law, and all the privileges that belonged to ordinary citizens were granted to them. The peasant question was a very difficult one in Denmark, and it was Struensee’s intention one day to abolish serfdom altogether. But in this reform even he was compelled to proceed by degrees.

Another royal decree abolished the salt tax, which had lain very heavily on the poorer classes, and had caused an outbreak among the peasantry. The abolition of this tax was most popular, though the reform was resisted by the nobility. A similar measure was an order forbidding the exportation of corn to foreign countries, while the importation from the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein and from one inland province to another was encouraged. The large landowners had been in the habit of selling their corn for export abroad at high prices, while their peasantry were starving for bread. This was effectually checked by this edict; many thousand loads of grain of every description were prevented from leaving the kingdom; and, during the severe winter which followed, were brought from the provincial granaries to Copenhagen, with the result that flour was sold at half the ordinary price to the inhabitants. It was also decreed that bread should be sold at the same low rate to the poor.

Queen Matilda had probably something to do with the measures for improving the condition of the poor, for she had great sympathy with toiling and suffering humanity. A few weeks after the regulations enforcing the sale of cheap bread, a hospital for six hundred poor children was established in Copenhagen. In this institution the Queen took a keen interest, and to cover the cost of founding and maintaining it a tax was levied on all carriage and saddle horses in the capital—another device by which the rich were taxed for the benefit of the poor, a complete reversal of the former order of things, whereby the poor were ground down for the benefit of the rich.

Against these beneficial reforms no objection could reasonably be taken, and whatever the private character and motives of the man responsible for them, they reflected great honour on his public administration. But when he came forward as a moral reformer, his views were more open to cavil. Copenhagen in the eighteenth century was a very immoral city despite severe penalties on immorality, and a system of police supervision that interfered with the liberty of the subject—if the subject were poor. Struensee would have done well to correct the abuses of the existing system for the suppression of vice, but he chose rather to abolish it altogether. “Improved morals,” wrote this eminent moralist, in one of his virtuous monarch’s royal decrees, “cannot be brought about by police regulations, which are also an encroachment on human liberty; for immoral conduct, if it have no directly injurious influence on the quiet and safety of society, must be left to the conscience to condemn. The secret vices which enforced constraint entail are frequently much greater offences against morality, and constraint only generates hypocrisy.” There was no doubt something to be urged from Struensee’s point of view. He had theories about racial perfectionism, and like many before and since, believed that artificial selection would produce a higher breed of men. With these ideas the conventional views of morality seemed to him superfluous, and his reforms were aimed quite as much against them as against social abuses.

For instance, the Danish penal laws directed against illegitimacy were barbarous; they called for reform, but Struensee swept them away altogether. He decreed that henceforth illegitimate children should not rest under any stigma; they were in future to be christened in precisely the same way as if they were legitimate, and irregular birth should no longer prevent a man from learning a trade, or carrying on a business. Mothers of illegitimate children were no more to be punished—the fathers had always got off scot free. For a long time, in consequence of these same cruel laws, secret births, child murder, and the desertion and exposure of new-born infants to the cold had been common in Copenhagen. To remedy this evil Struensee and the Queen imitated Catherine of Russia, and established a Foundling Hospital in Copenhagen,[157] but apparently without any safeguards to prevent its abuse. It began in a small way. A drawer containing a mattress was placed outside a window of the lying-in hospital; a notice was affixed that unfortunate mothers who were unable to maintain, from any cause, their children, could leave them there, to be taken care of by the state. This crÊche was so eagerly availed of that no less than twenty-four children were found in it during the first four days, and the number increased rapidly. The following Sunday, from almost every pulpit in Copenhagen, came denunciation of the new institution for foundlings. The clergy denounced it root and branch, as putting a premium on illegitimacy and immorality, and as throwing an unjust burden on the virtuous and industrious classes, by compelling them to rear and maintain the deserted offspring of the immoral and the idle. But Struensee did not heed. The old order of things, he maintained, had resulted in infanticide, and wicked waste of human life. And he held that these children, who had no fault but their illegitimacy, which was not their fault, might with proper care be reared into useful citizens. That he might thereby be going against his pet theory of racial perfectionism, and encouraging the multiplication of the unfit, apparently did not occur to him.

Struensee followed up this by an attack upon the marriage laws. It was decreed that henceforth none but the injured party should bring a charge of adultery. The custom by which persons convicted of adultery were put in the pillory and preached at publicly by the clergyman of the parish was also abolished, and all penalties beyond the dissolution of the marriage tie were forbidden. The table of kindred and affinity was rearranged, and marriages within certain prohibited degrees were allowed. The Church disapproved of the marriage of first cousins (though both Frederick V. and Christian VII. had contracted these alliances); they were not forbidden, but a dispensation was always required. This dispensation was now declared to be unnecessary by royal decree, and the same authority henceforth gave a man permission to marry his deceased wife’s niece, or his deceased wife’s sister. This aroused furious protests from the clergy, but Struensee did not heed, and further aggrieved the Church by converting two disused chapels into hospitals for the sick poor.

Thus it will be seen that, in his zeal for reform, Struensee aroused against himself the antagonism of nearly every class. The court officials, the nobles, the clergy, the lawyers, the burghers were attacked in turn, and all saw their ancient privileges torn away from them. Under the circumstances, their hostility to the new order of things was natural, but the unpopularity of Struensee among the people, whom he sought so greatly to benefit, is not so easy to understand. That he was unpopular there is no doubt. A good deal of this was due to the prejudice among the Danes against the German and the foreigner. Nearly all the advisers who now surrounded the King were of German extraction, and were dubbed “the German Junto”. All grace was taken from the royal decrees in the eyes of the Danes by the fact that they were issued in German. It is true the court had been for centuries the centre of Germanism in Denmark; but the people knew that Christian VII. spoke and wrote Danish very well, and until the advent of Struensee all royal decrees and government regulations (except those addressed to the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein) had been written in the Danish language. Now, in disregard of the national prejudice, they were issued in German; and the Danish people regarded this as an insult offered to them by a German minister. Moreover, it gave colour to the rumour that the King was for the most part ignorant of the decrees which appeared in his name, for it was said that otherwise he would most certainly have framed them in his own language when addressing his own people. Struensee, who had a contempt for forms and prejudices, and looked at everything from the broad point of view, excused himself on the ground that he had no time to learn the Danish language; but even so it would have been easy for him to have had these decrees translated into the Danish. As it was he threw away all the popularity he might have gained from his beneficial measures by wantonly affronting the national sentiment.